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Teen Titans GO to the Movies - Beast Boy Draw-along (part 1 of 2)

After having recently seen the Teen Titans GO to the Movies
(#TeenTitansGOMovie), I sat down and
pencilled a Beast Boy that I thought would be a fun draw along. This was a bit
of a quick one since I have many other duties to wrap up before my Lodi Library
Con appearance on Sept 23rd.

I jumped in with a dynamic pose, I wanted to do something
fun and use some sort of a dynamic angle that would bring out the quirkiness
that is Teen Titans GO and Beast Boy. So the first pose didn't quite cut that.
It was more of a cool pose, not so much quirky. The second one, however, was
much more dynamic and a bit of an upshot that allows for tweeking of the limbs
and a harsh slant to the perspective which lends itself to the dynamic pose.
Being as how this is a character pencil, there's no background, but it would
have been fun to incorporate one using this angle, it would've been
interesting.

After I nailed the pose, I just started laying in all the
guidelines I use that help me keep from making the drawing horribly out of
proportion. It's supposed to be considerably out of proportion, because I don't
like drawing real life proportions that much. I always want that something
more, that dynamic thing that comics give that just looks so great on the page
and screen.

I'm also using what Jim Lee (amongst many other artists #JimLee)
would call incorporating the "XYZ." Which is where you take the "Cartesian
XYZ Coordinates" and attempt to put different parts of the body planes
(any area that can be angled and head in a direction of one of the XYZ
coordinates) along the axis roughly, and it makes the overall image more
dynamic. As seen below, the directions can be positive or negative of where the
starting point or center of the axis is. These two diagrams are a rough idea of
what those are:

Another for reference:

Don't think of these specifically how you're seeing them
here. They're just a way to see depth (X), width (Y), and height (Z). If
something's at a weird angle, like Beast Boy's upper leg/thigh in the video,
that's going to be designated another angle, Like "A" or his shin
coming out at us would be "B" or the bottom of his foot even further
coming out at us would be "C" and so on ... But don't get too caught
up in that, it'll really mess with you and slow you down. Just know of its
existence and move forward.

You don't have to specifically choose a place to put the XYZ
center point in your drawing, it's just a principal to keep in mind so that you
know when you're "coming out toward the viewer" or "breaking
planes" visually. It just helps make it more engaging. Just roughly think
of it as below:

The object is to put those into a dynamic perspective that
helps you warp reality a little bit and bring visual interest. This is one of
the reasons that Jack Kirby is considered a King in comics. He had this down
pat. His style was lost on me as a kid, I simply didn't understand the insanely
huge contribution he made to comics until I got older and more skilled.

Towards the end of the video, I begin cleaning up the art a
little bit. This video ends around that point a little abruptly, but continues
where this left off in part two.

Hope you enjoyed this write up and found the video a helpful
combination to the thought process. I'll catch you in the next one!